Annmarie Throckmorton, M.A.
- Dec 6, 2018

I Used To Love To Work

I had hoped to be able to stabilize my elderly parents so that they would not need my daily care in order to stay in their own home, and then I could return to work as a technical writer of mechanical and electrical process. I loved that work, I enjoyed my colleagues. But my parents’ continued deterioration after 2007 cost me five years of my own old life, and since then I have been entangled with my late father’s nursing home traumas and my subsequent lawsuit for the loss of his leg due to their neglect, which has cost me six more years, and counting. I am soon to be seventy with many of the usual infirmities of age. I know that I will never work again. I will try to find employment when I am free of this lawsuit-from-hell but I will not succeed. I know that I complain of this repeatedly, but these circumstances impact me repeatedly.

I have been very ill in bed for the past week, only getting up for a while at the height of the day. I encourage myself by accomplishing a small household chore and/or uploading another illustrated blog post. These are pleasant and satisfying activities for me. Being sick has been painful and frightening. Actually, I am still ill and I am going back to bed soon. To put too fine a point on it, I am suffering with diarrhea and bleeding, initial simultaneous vomiting, shocking nose bleed, and exhaustion because I cannot get enough uninterrupted sleep due to the aforementioned. It has been so bad that I would have gone to a hospital but the cost is prohibitive. At any rate my mind is clear and I sense eventual, natural recovery.

Today I do not have money until my next year’s budget from my savings to replace my ten-year old gas stove that I had installed in 2007 when I bought my own home to be nearby my parents. Stoves should last for half a century, they used to. My made-in-China monstrosity’s oven ignition assembly went bad, after ten years but less than a few dozen uses. The part is non-repairable and non-replaceable. Today the company that charged me $120 for that in-home diagnosis called me, a year later, with a satisfaction survey. I managed not to curse on that call, but I failed that standard with subsequent telephone calls from scammers today. Scammers call me, and every elderly person that I know, three to six times a day.

COMPLETELY UNSATISFIED = 100%.